Death in the Off-Season

by Francine Mathews

  “Are you asking if he committed suicide?” Whitlow was unenthused.

  “Intentionally or no.”

  “Highly unlikely. The force of the blow to the back of the legs was strong enough to send him head over heels, fracturing his skull at impact. He would have lost consciousness immediately. And the presence of treatment drugs indi­cates a desire to live—they don’t come cheap.”

  Chapter 15

  Peter marked his place in War and Peace with a forefinger and threw his head back against his chair. The sweeping strains of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto filled the room, a faint breeze stirred in the darkness beyond the open window, and Ney lay at his feet, warm and relaxed, whiffling softly in his sleep. Usually Peter re­quired nothing more than these—good books, good music, a day of hard work followed by an evening of solitude—to feel complete con­tentment. But tonight he was restless and uneasy, his concentration broken by the slightest sound. He pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes. There would be no peace until Rusty’s killer was flushed out of hiding and the past could return to dust.

  The night had been broken more than once by the insistent buzz of his cell phone, bringing Ney to his feet with his tags clinking. The first caller was Merry Folger, telling him the state crime lab was done with Rusty’s body, and what did he intend to do with it? He’d thought for a moment and told her he’d call her back. The second call, from Georgiana, came through with exquisite timing a mere ten minutes later. She had reached their mother in Rome, listened with forbearance while Julia Mason screamed and moaned, then agreed to meet her plane at JFK the following afternoon.

  “When’s the funeral, Peter?” she had asked.

  “Whenever we like. The autopsy’s over.”

  “What did they find?”

  “The woman handling the case said she’d talk to me when I got back from Greenwich.”

  “So you’re coming here?”

  “It’s easy for everybody to reach, and it seems like the only place Rusty really thought of as home. I wouldn’t ask all of you to fly here.”

  There was a small silence, then an equally small sigh. “It’s just that I’m dreading this so much,” George said.

  “All the more reason to be close to the kids and Hale. We got through living with Rusty, and we’ll get through burying him.”

  “It will rain. You know it will rain. We’ll be gathered around a sod­den hole in the ground some idiot has attempted to disguise with Astroturf. The flowers will be hideous. Mother will make a scene. People will ask repeatedly where he’s been all these years, and how he died. I can’t bear it.”

  “I’ve been thinking, Georgiana,” Peter said. “What if we have the body cremated? Take the Seventh Wave out into the sound and commit him to the deep. It seems cleaner, somehow. And you know that boat was the only thing he really loved.”

  “It’s an idea,” she said slowly. “We’d have to persuade Mother. I can call Dr. Pritchett—he’s the yacht club chaplain—and ask for something private, a bit simpler than the usual solemn public cere­mony he stages. A burial at sea might be just the thing. We could have a quiet memorial service, just the family, and skip the graveside hor­rors. I’ll never be able to swim in the sound again, of course.”

  “To my knowledge, you haven’t dropped a toe in Long Island Sound in fourteen years.”

  “Barring the occasional capsizing,” Georgiana said, “not if I can help it. Peter, it’s horrible that we can discuss this so casually. I have to remind myself that Rusty was murdered. I suppose it’s because I’m not there that it doesn’t seem real to me.”

  “No,” Peter said. “It’s because Rusty has seemed dead for years. And we’ve been just as glad. There’s a vacuum of feeling where his life used to be. That’s what’s so horrible. And there’s nothing we can do about it, now.”

  “It’s been pretty shitty for you, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes. But I’m hoping it won’t get any worse.”

  Georgiana was silent a moment. Then, “Do they know who?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  He had called the station and only then realized Merry wasn’t on duty. The idea that she had a home—a life separate from her official capacity—was a revelation. He found himself wondering idly whether she lived alone, or knew how to cook, and if she had bookshelves, what she kept on them. It occurred to him that his tendency to see only pieces of people—the pieces that related to himself—was one more sign of how detached he’d become in the isolation of the farm. He failed to connect. He debated calling her cell. Then he redialed the station number and left a message that he would reach her in the morning.

  The final call was from Sky Tate-Jackson.

  “Have they come up with anything?” he asked, by way of greeting. He sounded nervous and tired. Peter knew he’d wanted to leave the island and felt a twinge of guilt for making him stay.

  “Malcolm Scott,” Peter said. “Name mean anything to you?”

  “Men’s clothing designer?”

  Peter snorted.

  “Golf pro?”

  “He was ME’s chief financial officer in Max’s time. Retired now, splits his year between Chappaqua and Boca Raton. I caught him just before he left town for the winter.”

  There was a pause as Sky digested this information. “The point being?”

  “Scott will see us Friday afternoon, if you can make time. I think he knows every dollar Mason Enterprises spent, and amazingly, he remem­bers why. He’s our key to the M&A fiasco Rusty tried to pull off.”

  “Peter—” Sky began, and then stopped. “Digging up the past isn’t going to do squat to help this investigation. You’re wasting your time. Concen­trate on getting the harvest in and let the police do their job.”

  “I’m picking up Rusty’s ashes in Boston Friday morning,” Peter said. “I can catch a shuttle and meet you in New York by one o’clock, if that suits.”

  “Who de­cided on cremation?”

  “I did. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We’d love to have you and Mayling at George’s Saturday for the memorial service.”

  Another pause. Then, “You’re a cold bastard,” Sky said, and hung up.

  Y

  The last notes of the concerto reverberated in the air. He closed his eyes in the silence for an instant and then reached down to restart the piece, wanting to hear again the opening chords. The last measured steps of a man on the verge of pas­sion, he thought. He hadn’t listened to Rachmaninoff in years. He told himself it was because the Romantic composers wore poorly with time; that intellectually, he had outstripped the music he had lived for in college; but the real reason was that Rachmaninoff was indelibly linked to Alison. In his mind he saw her outlined against a moonlit window, her lithe frame impossibly graceful in the darkness, her eyes picking up the faint glow slanting through the leaded panes. She was listen­ing to the music, head up and thoughts far away, her dancer’s body unconsciously swaying in time. The opening chords drew him toward her, step by step, until he stopped, poised on the edge of the sonorous plunge.

  “All the dark, impassioned, Russian night,” she said, turning toward him. “Do you feel it, Peter?” And then the music swept him into her arms.

  Ney thrust his cold nose into Peter’s ear and whined softly.

  “What, you want to hear the rest, too?” Peter said, fondling the bristling dome of the dog’s head. “Or do you find Bartók more chal­lenging?”

  He stood up and stretched. His legs ached with the pleasant mem­ory of that afternoon’s long, slow run through the moors. A low growl came from his feet, and he looked down in surprise. Ney’s ears were pointed toward the open window, and the hair on his back stood up in a vicious ridge. Suddenly he barked and shot over to the screen.

  The dog loved to chase a pair of nocturnal cats that lived wild on the moors. Peter reached for Ney’s le
ash and snapped it on, something he rarely did at night, but he had no desire to race after the dog while he tracked a mangy animal through the heath. Ney whined feverishly.

  “Hey, pup,” he said, opening the screen, “don’t get your hopes up. You’re headed for the hayloft.”

  The breeze had picked up and blew freshly from the northwest, sending the scent of scrub pine and bayberry off the cooling country­side. He glanced up at the sky, where a new September moon shot in and out of swiftly moving clouds. “Might get some weather tomorrow.”

  Ney trotted in front of him, conscious of the indignity of the lead, his ears up and his bark caught in his throat. The cat he’d scented must have gone downwind. Peter’s shoes were slick with dew from the stubby ends of the grass, left high all summer, then mown and baled a few weeks before the cranberry harvest. A few crick­ets sounded, already marked with the lethargy of cooler nights, the most mournful note of late summer; and Peter shivered suddenly. Ney reached the barn door and turned to look at him, tail wagging.

  Rafe was gone, probably to the Greengage, but his light was on and a magazine left open on the desk. Ney trotted over to the dog bed in one corner of the room and flopped down, secure in the comfort of his routines. Peter unhooked the dog’s leash and smoothed his ears once before turning to go. As he did, he glanced at the magazine on the desk and his eye was caught by the face of a famous baseball player, endors­ing a mutual fund. Peter bent closer, a line between his brows, and flipped over the cover. An investment monthly. What did Rafe have to invest?

  He shook away his curiosity and reflected that Merry Folger had shown him two nights ago how little he knew about Rafe. The man could have a personal investment analyst on retainer at Morgan Stan­ley for all Peter knew. Or cared to ask.

  He pulled shut the door and clattered down the stairs. The wind had grown stronger, and the barn door he’d left ajar was shuddering in the sporadic gusts. He considered leaving it open for Rafe and the Rover, then heaved it closed and made for the house, head down and hands in his pockets. He felt completely alone tonight and tired to his bones. Perhaps he should have gone with Rafe to the Greengage. But the funeral and family he faced during the next few days would exact an emotional toll, and he knew he’d better get his sleep.

  George was right; his mother would make a scene. She was a strong-willed and self-blinding woman who had never accepted her son’s flight, just as she’d never forgiven his father for driving Rusty to it. That last Christmas had torn open the abyss between his parents. Julia was white and silent at Max’s funeral, her unvented fury leaving her impotent and speechless; at Rusty’s memorial, she would be terrible in her rage and unappeased in her loss.

  A twig cracked somewhere in front of him. Peter looked up, pulled out of his thoughts, and stopped. A dim figure in a coat and a shapeless hat, pulled low on the brow, stood in the darkness just beyond the kitchen doorway. He was reminded suddenly of the detective, as she had stood by his fire two nights ago. Perhaps she’d come to talk about the autopsy. To his surprise, the thought of her made his pulse quicken.

  “Detective Folger?” he said, walking forward. “Merry?”

  He saw the brief candle’s flare of the gun as it went off and instinc­tively jumped aside, conscious of the shot’s report coming a second after the stinging pain. The blood was on his hands and he had touched them to his face. He had never been able to stand the sight or smell of blood. As he crumpled to the ground he heard Ney, barking wildly in the barn, and knew that his assailant was running towards him.

  Chapter 16

  The headlights of the Explorer pulled up on the shoulder of Cod­fish Park Road threw Merry’s shadow across the night sand almost to the waterline of Siasconset beach. She stood with her hands on her hips and her back to the light, staring at a waterlogged leather gym bag that sat like a grotesque jellyfish on the sand just above the high-water mark. Howie Seitz, his arm around a girl and his feet planted firmly next to the bag, was grinning triumphantly, and, Merry thought, with reason. He was out of uniform, and his eyes, caught in the headlights when he looked up at her, glittered like agates. His success and the rightness of his air of virtue annoyed her, and she scowled until her face was all black eyebrow.

  “Tell me you haven’t destroyed the evidence, Seitz,” she said.

  “Hey, you trained me, Detective. No way I’d screw up evidence. I just opened the thing to see if there was an ID inside, and that’s when I saw the passport. I stayed with the bag while Deanna ran up to call you.”

  “Good of you,” Merry said shortly, nodding toward the girl. She was a lithe summer kid, maybe all of seventeen, with the requisite mass of hair and buttery dark skin. She was clearly undecided whether this hiatus in an evening’s grope on the beach was an excitement or a bore. She flicked her hair over one shoulder impatiently and huddled closer to Howie.

  Merry walked over to them and squatted down next to the bag. It smelled vividly of rotten fish. She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and unzipped the bag. A large clump of seaweed wrapped around the gills of some­thing indeterminate was decaying quietly under her nose. Just like Howie to leave it there for her. He’d probably been hoping she’d retch. She carefully scooped out the stinking mass and laid it on the sand at his feet, then extended her hand. He slapped her palm with his flashlight. The bleached white shape of a rat gleamed suddenly at her feet, and she jumped, dropping the light.

  “A Mayling Stern sweater,” she said through bitten lips. “I’ll be damned.” She lifted the sodden mass of sea-blue wool and scanned the button edge. Sure enough, one of them was missing. Her heart pounding, she dove back into the bag and shone the flashlight on its contents. Howie uncharacteristically said nothing, but waited to be released, his hand running up and down the girl’s shoulder. The wind off the Atlantic was brisk, and she was probably freezing.

  “Looks like a change of clothes, some bottles—shampoo and prescription drugs—in a plastic baggie, and some papers. There’s his passport. Brazilian. That explains the FBI’s failure to pick him up at the border. No doubt it’s waterlogged and indecipherable by now. Let’s hope Clarence can pull some prints.” She flicked the passport cover open under the light for Howie to see, revealing an evil-looking photograph of Rusty Mason. “Jorge Luis Ribeiro. Not the name we ran by the rental car agencies or ticket sellers. We’ll have to redo those queries, Seitz.”

  One more piece of paper lay at the bottom of the bag. Merry reached in and extracted a blurred black-and-white photograph. She passed it under the light curiously, brushing away some grains of sand that clung to its surface. “Now what’s so important about this, I won­der,” she said.

  The snapshot had been old and worn well before its submersion in seawater. A sepia haze had leached through the photo­graphic paper, clouding the image. A woman stood on a city sidewalk, leaning toward the open window of a limousine, apparently taking leave of its occupant, whose face was clearly visible in the center of the frame. A dark-haired man well past middle age, but distinguished and arresting; the sort of face that commanded attention. The woman’s face was half hidden by sunglasses, but her carriage and clothing sug­gested elegance, and from the length of toned leg braced on the sidewalk, Merry concluded she was rather young.

  “What’s so important about this picture that you bring it six thou­sand miles in a bag with a change of clothing?”

  “Maybe it had some sentimental value?” Seitz said.

  “Thank you, Howie. Advance to senior year.” She shoved her hair behind her ears. “When do you get off this island, anyway?”

  “Saturday morning. And man, it won’t be fast enough,” Howie said joyfully. Deanna stiffened and shot him a look. Too late, he caught himself. She wriggled out from under his arm.

  “Yeah, well, like I’ve got a life here in high school too, you know, and I’ve got better things to do on a weeknight than freeze my ass off out here on the beach,” she said. “Lat
er, Howie. Call me when you know what it’s worth.” She shot off across the sand, hair streaming furi­ously in her wake.

  “Car thirty-four,” the Explorer’s police radio squawked suddenly in the darkness, and Merry jumped, sitting back on the cold sand. That was her car. She looked at the swiftly vanishing teenager. “You can go catch up with her,” she said to Howie. “You’re not on duty. I’ll handle this.” She stood up and brushed off her pants.

  “You’re not on duty, either,” Howie said.

  Merry hoisted the water-soaked bag, crossed to the Explorer, and picked up the handset. “When has that ever mattered? Get out of here. And Seitz . . .” She leaned back around the doorframe to thank him, heard another burst of static over the line, and thought better of it. “Car thirty-four,” she said, clicking on the radio. “Over.”

  Howie thrust his hands in his jeans and shrugged off in the direction Deanna had taken.

  Merry began to swear. Her voice stopped Howie in his tracks. She caught a last glimpse of his bewildered face in the headlights as she roared past him, hell-bent for the Milestone Road and town.

  They had peter on a gurney behind a hanging plastic curtain at the Nantucket Cottage Hospital. His arrival by ambulance had caused a sensation. Gunshot wounds, however common to urban emergency rooms, were a rarity on the island. Only two of the seats in the waiting area held patients—an elderly gentleman who propped a swollen wrist on his knee and a small girl with a candy wrapper stuck high in her right nostril. The television screen, suspended from the ceiling, ran baseball scores unattended. The two patients looked up at Merry hopefully when she tore through the emergency room’s swinging doors, sensing the arrival of Chapter Two in the unfolding drama.

  “They’re taping him up, Detective, ” said Peter’s housekeeper, Rebecca.

  She was standing in front of the reception desk, her gaunt frame hunched like a question mark over a sheaf of papers. She wore no makeup, and her iron-gray hair was clipped short all over her head like a man’s. She chewed her inner cheek as she filled out the forms and her bony right hand shook.